Formulation of personal care and cosmetic products, such as shampoos, conditioners, sunscreen lotions, lipstick products, mascara, and the like, presents a number of challenges. The feel and look of such products should appeal to consumers. For example, it may be desirable for certain of such products to have a non-greasy skin feel, good skin-spread ability, pleasant smell, and so on. At the same time, the cosmetic and personal care products typically include a variety of necessary ingredients. For the formulator, the necessity of obtaining physical characteristics that appeal to consumers coexists with the necessity of incorporating the necessary functional ingredients in the product.
Personal care and cosmetic products typically include chemical compounds that function as emollients. The emollients contribute to the desired skin feel, but often serve other purposes in the formulation as well.
Emollients, which often constitute a major portion of the product formulation, can also significantly influence the dissolution/dispersion of the functional ingredients in the formulation. For example, the sunscreen products include sunscreen active ingredients that are preferably uniformly dissolved or dispersed in the formulation. However, certain commonly used sunscreen active ingredients exhibit poor solubility/dispersability in the product formulations. Any non-uniform distribution of the active ingredient may lead to a reduction in the quality and performance of the sunscreen product. Likewise, many cosmetic and personal care products contain fragrances, which also may exhibit poor solubility/dispersability, making it difficult to incorporate the fragrances in the product formulation. Therefore, the emollient component of the product formulation should not negatively effect the solubility of the functional ingredient(s), and, preferably, should help solubilize or disperse the functional ingredient(s) in the formulation.
Certain aromatic esters are presently used as ingredients in the personal care and cosmetic products. For example, Croda Corporation of Parsippany, N.J., manufactures and sells alkoxylated esters of aromatic dicarboxylic and tricarboxylic acids, which are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,693,316, 5,597,555, 5,455,025, and 5,302,377. The aromatic compounds disclosed in these patents are esters of aromatic carboxylic acids, and thus contain an ester carboxylic group in which the aromatic nucleus (Ar) is connected to the carbon atom of the ester carboxylic group, and the fatty alkyl group (R) is connected to the ester oxygen atom (Oe) of the ester carboxylic group. Thus, the overall order of connection to the ester carboxylic group in these esters may be illustrated as: 
Although these esters are excellent emollients for sunscreens and cosmetics, the need still exists for new compounds useful as ingredients for personal care and cosmetic products to provide additional options to the product formulators. Specifically, the need exists for emollient compounds that improve the solubility of active ingredients in the formulation while contributing to a pleasant skin feel.